Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Madras.

M.Tech. / My research explores how process, i.e. the physical means of material production, can embody and conceptually signify transformation within personal and public realms. My practical work draws on multiple material sources which I subject to various physical processes in order to produce alteration. These material processes function as metaphors for processes of self-exploration. In my theoretical argument, I propose speculative connections between my sense of liberation (experienced in the processes of artmaking and through my adoption of instability, dissolution, hybridity and open-endedness as working strategies) and certain socio-political transformations that have occurred in the past decade. Cultural effects of postcolonialism such as hybridity and otherness are used as reference points in my theoretical text, in which I foreground personal narrative as integral to my research design. Ways in which the contemporary South African artist, Penny Siopis similarly engages autobiography as subject matter and working strategy, are explored and interwoven into my discussion.

The problem addressed in this paper was the appropriateness of fiber, especially in the form of fabric, as an art medium. Relevant statements by crafts makers, philosophers, art critics, and artists were investigated along with historical and contemporary art and craft works.

This study provides the first comprehensive account of the institutional history of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA) from the earliest calls for its foundation at the start of the twentieth century to the recent series of exhibitions marking its fiftieth anniversary in 2010. The SNGMA is both a unique case‐study and a useful illustrative example of the specific category of modern art museum: the account of its history sets the institution within its wider cultural context and explores the inevitable complexities facing a public gallery devoted to modern art. The study examines how the institution has balanced the need to represent a full historical survey of modern art with the desire to engage with the contemporary, and how it has addressed the question of collecting and displaying the work of Scottish artists alongside international art. By providing a close documentary analysis of the evolution of the institution, drawn from within the Gallery’s own archives, combined with extended reflections on the central dilemmas it has had to face, the study constitutes an original contribution to museum scholarship. Various methodologies are employed to assess the diverse factors that have affected the institution’s development. The narrative confirms the close correlation between the architectural frame and the public perception of the institution. It traces the evolution of the acquisitions policy and notes how this shaped the permanent collection, allowing a shift from an aspiration to universal coverage of the international trends of 20th century art to a more targeted specialisation in certain areas, primarily Dada and Surrealism. It charts the attitudes towards temporary exhibitions and the display of the permanent collection, and examines these in the light of current exhibition theory and practice. The analysis concludes that the SNGMA has been largely successful at achieving the aims and ambitions it originally defined for itself, although its role is constantly evolving in response to changes in the broader context of art museums.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, School of Culture and Communication, 2008. Thesis by dissertation and creative work. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

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This thesis examines the legacy and consequences of Constructivism in art, from the early days of the Russian avant-garde to recent times and today. The Introduction explains how the concept of faktura, first theorised around 1912 by David Burliuk and others, came to designate the material qualities rather than the subject-matter of art. Chapter 1: Towards A Constructive Ideal, traces the progress of faktura in the reliefs of V.Tatlin from 1913. The ancestry of faktura in the Eastern icon tradition is emphasised, where a close relation between sight and touch already suggested a new type of encounter between the viewer and the object of art. The chapter further examines the importance of faktura to Suprematism, and examines A.Rodchenko’s appeal to line as a rational element of construction and as a weapon against ‘composition’ in art. Chapter 2: Time and the Viewer presents evidence of the importance to artists in the period 1940-70 of the real-time encounter between viewer and the art-object, first in American and British ‘Constructionism’, and then in the Minimal art of Judd, Morris and others. The chapter ends with a discussion of temporality in relation to abstract paintings of Rothko and de Kooning. Chapter 3: Irregular Curves: Science and ‘The Organic’ reprises the minority Constructivism of Mikhail Matyushin and Pyotr Miturich that claimed organic structures were superior to technicist ones. Evidence is presented that the rectilinear grid was always subject to challenge, initially in the art of Emma Kunz, Jean Arp and other pre-war modernists but latterly among those for whom ‘field’ and ‘curvature’ became relevant formats after 1945. Particularly with the development of computing from the 1970s, new geometries based on iteration and scale-invariancy assumed major relevance to constructed art. Chapter 4: Constructivism Now presents evidence of the application of Constructivist principles in recent art, initially in Dan Flavin’s ‘monuments’ to Tatlin and others and subsequently in so-called Neo-Geo and Op art of the 1970s and 1980s. From that period on, albeit often in a register of irony and ‘serious play’, faktura in a Constructivist sense continued, and continues today, to define the relation between viewer and object of art.

This thesis examines the questionable avant-garde-ness of contemporary Chinese art, based on a systematically archived primary source. It includes year-by-year databases of artworks, exhibitions, diaries, notebooks, articles, reading lists and music records collated by the author specifically for this research with the help and involvement of the artists and historians concerned. The carefully selected material is not only derived from direct conversation with historical witnesses, but also reflects the author's cautious cross-examination of the available evidence, as history is recorded by human beings, to some extent, it can be poorly documented and biased. In spite of many existing publications on the origin of contemporary Chinese art, this thesis provides a much closer scrutiny of particular aspects with a first hand and meticulously chosen material, which offers a macro-microscopic (collective/individual) dualist view on the history. In the filed, the term “contemporary Chinese art” has been used to describe certain trends of art developed in China since 1978. The '85 New Wave movement – within which emerged dozens of new art groups – has been commonly recognised as the birth of contemporary Chinese art. The New Concrete Image was the leading art group of the Life-Stream, one major faction of the New Wave. The development of this group explains the uniqueness of the trajectory of avant-garde art in China: from autonomous organisations to semi-governmental powers; from a modernist movement to a post-modernist one.

This thesis investigates the impact of telepathy and psi on conceptual and performance art from 1968. Emerging from the author???s art practice, the thesis argues telepathy is a key leitmotif and creative concern within much post 60s art, and has become central to the practice of a number of contemporary video, performance and new media artists. This thesis is composed of two interrelated parts: an exhibition of the artwork by the author concerning telepathic processes, and a written project which uses the major themes of the exhibition to frame an historical study of a number of key contemporary artists whom, it is argued, work with telepathy. These artists, Jane and Louise Wilson, Suzanne Treister and Susan Hiller are discussed under the themes of ???twinning and doubling,??? ???technological mediums??? and ???telepathy experiments???. These themes also overlap in the authors artwork, are introduced through an overarching analysis of the work of performance artist Marina Abramovi?? and philosopher Jacques Derrida who, it is argued, provide a new model of telepathy as an art practice. In addition, the thesis argues that telepathy is an often suppressed thematic in art which may not appear to directly address it, and uses the work on the Wilsons, Treister and Hiller to re-look at other 20th Century artists and artistic themes in the light of the conclusions it draws on telepathy and art. Walter Benjamin greatly admired the Surrealists, but had virtually no time for their interest in telepathy, hypnosis and psi. Together with positive materialist misappropriations of Adorno???s Thesis Against Occultism, artistic and theoretical work with telepathy and psi has been sidelined from other important themes in art and critical theory, all of which telepathy and psi illuminate, energise and empower. The art of the author and other more recognised and established artists can be seen to work with telepathy in ways that flow into and reinforce the grain of progressive leftist practice and aesthetics. Women???s work with telepathy should be considered as important as women???s work with sexuality. Women, sexuality, Otherness, liminality, spirituality, telepathy, trauma, healing, radical politics, and other taboo areas of patriachal codes, were adandoned by macho participants of fluxus and Conceptual art. The recent conceptual and performance tilt in contemporary art sheds new light on the problem of working within and developing an effective and dynamic lineage of telepathy in post 60s art as well as early modern art movements. Contemporary developments in science, engineering, biology, psychoanalysis, warfare, popular culture and sociology show the wider relevance of discourse on telepathy. There is much at stake for visual art, aesthetics and visuality in representing, celebrating and interrogating the theme of psi and telepathy in current practice and art history. Artists??? work with telepathy and psi, although not always explicitly psychological, political or aesthetic, is often very psychologically, politically and aesthetically effective.